Page 779 - ANNA KARENINA

Anna Karenina

Chapter 2

When he got home, Vronsky found there a note from
Anna. She wrote, ‘I am ill and unhappy. I cannot come
out, but I cannot go on longer without seeing you. Come
in this evening. Alexey Alexandrovitch goes to the council
at seven and will be there till ten.’ Thinking for an instant
of the strangeness of her bidding him come straight to her,
in spite of her husband’s insisting on her not receiving
him, he decided to go.
Vronsky had that winter got his promotion, was now a
colonel, had left the regimental quarters, and was living
alone. After having some lunch, he lay down on the sofa
immediately, and in five minutes memories of the hideous
scenes he had witnessed during the last few days were
confused together and joined on to a mental image of
Anna and of the peasant who had played an important part
in the bear hunt, and Vronsky fell asleep. He waked up in
the dark, trembling with horror, and made haste to light a
candle. ‘What was it? What? What was the dreadful thing
I dreamed? Yes, yes; I think a little dirty man with a
disheveled beard was stooping down doing something, and
all of a sudden he began saying some strange words in

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